Tool Mentor: Refining the Team Backlog with Engineering Workflow Management

Synopsis

"The team backlog represents the collection of all the things a team needs to do to advance their portion of the system. It contains user and enabler stories that originate from the program backlog, as well as stories that arise locally from the team’s specific context."

Details

Note: The tool mentor does not specify how often this task is performed, or whether it is done with meetings. We take the approach that the Product Owner or Scrum Master will call meetings as required. See Meetings and Engineering Workflow Management.

Step

Tool guidance

1. Refine Stories

Discuss, rank, and estimate stories in the Team Backlog. Establish an initial understanding of acceptance criteria.

a. Click Plans > Quick Planner > Iteration Planning .

b. In My Team Area, set the appropriate team.

c. If unable to view stories, the Categories have not been assigned to the teams. See Configure Team Area EWM

d. To modify rank, click and drag the work item up or down, or type a new number in the "rank" column.

e. To estimate the story points, click the right dropdown menu and assign story points.

See stories needing story points. Project Dashboards > All [Project name] Dashboards > [Team Name] > Scrum Master tab

See Managing a Project with Quick Planner

Acceptance criteria can be added as text to the story. Some teams may want to define and link to specific test cases.

2. Detail high ranked work items

Add detail to high ranked work items that are likely to be implemented in the next Sprint.

Hover over each of the work items and review the description. If it needs more detail, click on the work item and make edits.

3. Ongoing

New issues, dependencies and stories are captured.

New work items can be added directly in QuickPlanner.

Click Plans > Quick Planner > Iteration Planning

Additionally, to create work items using the web client, see Creating work items in the web client.